![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
divisionsandprecisionsIt is springtime, when a CSA's mind turns to strawberries...
The CSA has been ramping up the amount of strawberries they distribute. Last week, it was up to eight pints! For two people for a week, this was excessive. We had been eating them with ice cream, whipped cream, yogurt, pound cake, and nothing but a sprinkle of sugar. But with four quarts to deal with, we had to bring out the big guns. We made jam.
We followed the instructions from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Acidic foods like most fruits can be canned in a water bath; they don't need a pressure canner. For water bath canner, read spaghetti pot. We used Pomona's Universal Pectin rather than regular pectin, because it doesn't require sugar to set. You can put in whatever amount of sugar you want. We did 1:4 sugar to strawberries rather than the 1:1 more typical with regular pectin. About 2-1/2 quarts of strawberries gave us a little over a quart of jam (in four one-cup canning jars).
The rest of the strawberries went into a strawberry cobbler, for which I accidentally doubled the sugar, thus partially canceling out the sugar saved by using the Pomona pectin.
We ordered a real water bath canner. I remember having giant bowls of peaches all over the place last summer, and I have plans... The spaghetti pot was not really big enough for one-cup jars, and certainly too small for one-pint jars.
If we get more strawberries, we will try freezing them (dry pack method).
The CSA has been ramping up the amount of strawberries they distribute. Last week, it was up to eight pints! For two people for a week, this was excessive. We had been eating them with ice cream, whipped cream, yogurt, pound cake, and nothing but a sprinkle of sugar. But with four quarts to deal with, we had to bring out the big guns. We made jam.
We followed the instructions from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Acidic foods like most fruits can be canned in a water bath; they don't need a pressure canner. For water bath canner, read spaghetti pot. We used Pomona's Universal Pectin rather than regular pectin, because it doesn't require sugar to set. You can put in whatever amount of sugar you want. We did 1:4 sugar to strawberries rather than the 1:1 more typical with regular pectin. About 2-1/2 quarts of strawberries gave us a little over a quart of jam (in four one-cup canning jars).
The rest of the strawberries went into a strawberry cobbler, for which I accidentally doubled the sugar, thus partially canceling out the sugar saved by using the Pomona pectin.
We ordered a real water bath canner. I remember having giant bowls of peaches all over the place last summer, and I have plans... The spaghetti pot was not really big enough for one-cup jars, and certainly too small for one-pint jars.
If we get more strawberries, we will try freezing them (dry pack method).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 04:03 pm (UTC)The farm that does our CSA also does some large crops for national distribution, one of which is strawberries. Weirdly, the strawberries are the *least* fresh of anything they send out. Maybe the other stuff is picked directly for sending out to the CSA sites, but the strawberries are just pulled off a pallet in a warehouse.
Hmmmm What if a MA CSA sent out 4 quarts of cranberries every week?